Muscle Relaxation Techniques For Anxiety Relief

Although not everyone who suffers from excessive blushing would describe themselves as a generally selfish person, most excessive blushers have some degree of anxiety at some point before, during or after a blush occurs.

You can learn a lot about how to cope with whatever degree of anxiety your blushing creates by learning some of the coping strategies that are helpful to people with generalized anxiety disorder. The strategies that are the most helpful for the most number of people are relaxation techniques.

There are several types of relaxation techniques, the most well-known of which is deep breathing. Deep breathing allows you to lower your level of anxiety by using your breathing to create a feeling of calm and relaxation. Many people, however, have a lot of physical tension and have a more difficult time getting that feeling of relaxation that they're after.

If you have a difficult time relaxing while doing deep breathing, you may want to begin your relaxation exercises by doing progressive muscle relaxation before you begin your deep breathing exercises.

Progressive muscle relaxation has been around for decades. Just like deep breathing, it's as simple as it is effective. All that you do is first tense and then relax muscle groups in order. When you tense a group of muscles and then relax them, they will automatically relax more than they had been originally. The particular order is up to you, the order we are describing is an example.

To begin progressive muscle relaxation, sit in a comfortable chair in a quiet place. Close your eyes and quiet your breathing. Tense the muscles in your right hand and count to five, then relax them. It does not matter how you tende the muscles. Some people will make a fist, others will straight out their hand. The key is to tense the muscles to a comfortable degree. Over-tensioning the muscles can cause discomfort, much the same as an overdone workout.

Moving on, tense and relax the muscles in your lower arm, upper arm and shoulder, one at a time, then move over to your left hand, arm and shoulder. Then begin go on to your head and face. You may not have noticed how many small muscle groups you have in your head and face. You can tense and then relax these muscle groups one at a time by lowering or raising your eyebrows, smiling or frowning or opening your jaw. Be gentle when you move on to your neck. Tense the muscles by gently moving your neck to one side and the other, forward and back, remembering to completely relax after tensing each muscle group. Move down your back, down your legs and to your feet until you have tensed and relaxed each muscle group in your body.

By the time you finish this progressive relaxation exercise, you will probably already notice that your breathing has relaxed and deepened quite a bit. Because your body has already become quite relaxed this is a perfect time to enter into your deep breathing exercises. Starting with a relaxed body will increase the effectiveness of any relaxation exercise program.